


Cupcakes

by Slumber



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Slytherins Being Slytherins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-20
Updated: 2011-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26406958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slumber/pseuds/Slumber
Summary: This is how Tracey Davis learns to bake.
Collections: 30-minute Writer's Block Challenge





	Cupcakes

**Author's Note:**

> The only things, I think, that are facts for Tracey Davis: she's a Slytherin and was listed as Halfblood.

This is how Tracey Davis learns to bake.

She is five years old, all curly blonde hair and smudged fingers, dirty knees, running home from outside. She is out of breath, all laughter and excitement--Piers chased her everywhere that day, and she found him and chased him right back. Now she is starving, and her mum says she's going to make something for her that day.

"Mum!" she shouts, running to the kitchen when the living room and her mum's room and the patio prove empty. "Mum!"

It isn't the first time her mum makes her cookies, she's sure of it now. She's seen them before, steaming round biscuits of crumbly sweetness, melting chocolate chips and the sweet smell of her home, but this is her first memory of them regardless. Of her mother (tall and elegant and beautiful and everything Tracey wants to be when she grows up but thinks impossible to ever become) looking back at her with a smile and saying, "Not quite done yet, dear," in the gentle way that's done everything from soothing Tracey's fears, her scratches and bruises, her tears. 

She is mixing something in a bowl, her long slender hands holding a spatula, then a blender, and Tracey leans over the counter to watch. Her elbows barely reach the edge of it and she is on tiptoes, but her mother picks her up and sets her on the edge ("Be careful," she warns Tracey.) so that she can watch.

* * *

Tracey's first cupcakes are lumpy. They are soggy in places, lumpy in others--evidently she forgot to stir them as well as she should have--but her mum eats them all with gusto and praise, even the part where a piece of parchment paper came out with her cupcake.

* * *

The day Tracey receives her first letter to Hogwarts (realizes she's a witch, that there's a reason for the things she can't explain having done, that _magic_ exists outside her favorite books) she finds out about how her father died.

* * *

Her mum writes her often, and she doesn't know how she ends up in her house but she becomes a Slytherin, and it only takes Pansy Parkinson three weeks to figure out that she's got a Muggle for a mum. (Years later, she'll wonder if her ability to sense her Muggle mum would be an issue, and consequent attempt to keep that fact hidden, were _why_ she ended up in the house she did.) 

The girls tease her for being less than them, a fact she doesn't understand, doesn't get. She retreats to the girl's dorm and finds a spell that keeps her bed protected from the cruel pranks of spoiled little witches.

* * *

Unlike most of her classmates, she takes to potions almost immediately. Something about the process of culling the best ingredients, of coaxing their magical properties through deliberate cutting and slicing and grinding, of mixing in _just the right amount_ of paracress sap here and moonflower dew there, is at once fascinating and natural to her. She replaces the flour and the sugar with monkshood and bicorn horn, the neat little rows of cupcake pans with a pewter cauldron of standard size. Instead of the oven she uses a wand, instead of sweets she stoppers potions.

She receives high marks in her OWLs and NEWTs, but misses the last year of her schooling to go into hiding.

* * *

In Prague, cowering in a dirty one-bed inn with her mother (now frail and gaunt, scared and shivering) she wonders if she is just retracing her father's last steps.

* * *

She doesn't mean it at first, the day it happens. She is baking (they befriend a few locals, they have use of the kitchen) and her mother passes by, offering her the smallest of smiles but she is almost certain there is nothing happy there, not like she had been years before. Not even the smell of freshly baked sweets could draw her out anymore, but Tracey remembers the simple ingredients of a cheering unction she learned in second year. It is quick enough to fix, easy enough to add to the baking cakes.

The smile her mother gives her is worth it, she thinks.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider donating to local organizations who support trans individuals in your area.


End file.
